After a great start to his year in the Rainbow Jersey, things went downhill quickly for Michal Kwiatkowski. The 25 year old Pole had to take a break from racing to refind his legs and after a good race in Quebec, he is looking stronger and may be hitting shape at the right time ahead of his Worlds defence.

“The feeling of training is completely different from racing, but actually the sensations in the legs last weekend were optimistic so I can look forward to upcoming races. I trained in August really hard,” Kwiatkowski told VeloNews from Québec.

“I didn’t have much of a break after the Tour because I raced again in the Tour of Poland and then straight after I went to altitude training camp in Livigno for 16 days, where I was super-motivated because I knew that something was going wrong. The shape was not what I would expect in July. So I hope I will be good again.”

The Pole says he is once more going to forgo the Worlds time trial, to ensure he is in peak shape for the road race, which takes place a few days later.

It’s all for the road,” Kwiatkowski said. “It worked out last year, just with the team time trial, and then six days to recover, it’s perfect for me to have good feeling on Sunday. Let’s hope that’s enough this year as well.”

While the Richmond course has less meters of climbing than the one he won on last year, he says the course is still hard and anything can happen.

“It’s still hilly and it’s a classic, so anything can happen,” he said. “It depends on the riders, how the peloton wants to play it, how the favorites want to play it. I still haven’t seen the course on my own, but I will have almost two weeks to check out every key moment. It’s all in our hands.”